Turning box tops into cash

Students play on the playground at Banks Elementary School on Tuesday. Banks will be the recipient of a $50,000 donation by Frances Dickerson, who recently won a ‘Box Tops for Education’ sweepstakes through Food Lion and General Mills. The winnings will be put towards new playground equipment, technology upgrades and books for the school’s library.

Sara Pezzoni / The Free Press

By Noah Clark / Staff Writer

Published: Wednesday, November 13, 2013 at 08:12 PM.

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An ordinary trip to the grocery store by a Kinston resident ended up paying huge dividends for Banks Elementary School.

Frances Dickerson said she won a “Box Tops for Education” sweepstakes sponsored by General Mills and Food Lion, with a grand prize of 500,000 box tops, which equals $50,000. She was then able to select a school to receive the money, and she chose Banks.

Dickerson said she did absolutely nothing to win the sweepstakes, and didn’t even know about it until after she had been notified that she had won.

“From my understanding there was a week in August that if you purchased six items with box tops on them and used your MVP card, your name was put into a drawing,” she said.

She said she took a week to figure out if the prize was indeed real before she notified Banks about the prize.

She said she chose Banks because her son went to Banks 40 years ago and because it is her neighborhood school.

Banks Principal Cynthia Faulkner said she was excited when she received the news.

An ordinary trip to the grocery store by a Kinston resident ended up paying huge dividends for Banks Elementary School.

Frances Dickerson said she won a “Box Tops for Education” sweepstakes sponsored by General Mills and Food Lion, with a grand prize of 500,000 box tops, which equals $50,000. She was then able to select a school to receive the money, and she chose Banks.

Dickerson said she did absolutely nothing to win the sweepstakes, and didn’t even know about it until after she had been notified that she had won.

“From my understanding there was a week in August that if you purchased six items with box tops on them and used your MVP card, your name was put into a drawing,” she said.

She said she took a week to figure out if the prize was indeed real before she notified Banks about the prize.

She said she chose Banks because her son went to Banks 40 years ago and because it is her neighborhood school.

Banks Principal Cynthia Faulkner said she was excited when she received the news.

“We were all jumping up and down when we found out,” she said.

Faulkner said Dickerson was able to select Banks because of the “Box Tops for Banks” program at the school, which is sponsored by General Mills as part of their overall “Box Tops for Education” initiative. She said box tops can be found on General Mills products such as cereal and Ziploc bags.

She said parents cut out the box tops, which are worth 10 cents each, and donate them to be redeemed by the school. She said last year Banks received $600 in box top money, a far cry from the $50,000 won by Dickerson.

She said Banks will receive the check in December.

Faulkner said she surveyed parents, students and teachers to get their opinion on how to uses the money. She said survey results showed technology, library books and the playground as areas of desired improvement.

“As a team, we are going to come up with what will make the biggest impact here at Banks,” she said.

Faulkner said the school can be more flexible with the money than with other funds, and she hopes to upgrade at least two of the areas cited in the survey.

“We can be more creative with what we do with it, because there are no stipulations on how we use it as a whole,” she said. “We need to do something that is going to make a big impact that parents and students can see, to make Banks a better place. Other funds are so limited or guided by certain stipulations; this is something we can spend on things like the playground.”

Dickerson said she was glad to help out an area school.

“It was exciting,” she said. “I’m glad I could give it to a school, because the chances of my name being drawn were very slim, so I was very happy with it.”

Noah Clark can be reached at 252-559-1073 or Noah.Clark@Kinston.com. Follow him on Twitter at @nclark763.